Sports Cars Pictures

Where else can you watch the world´s top motorcyclists starting next to ambitious amateurs and fun-riders? No place else but here at the Erzberg Rodeo. No matter if Enduro-Champion, Dakar-Expert, Freestyle-Superstar or just anyone else of the up to 1,500 starters - they all have the same sand between their teeth and the same goal before their eyes: to conquer the hill. Fast. Very fast. Last year the Sunday event had been stopped due to a cruel snowstorm, this year the curse of perfect weather conditions was the dust, reducing visibility down to zero.

"Eat my dust" quickly became the motto of the day on the 13.3 km long and approximately 13 m wide track. Among the first group of starters - sent on the prologue one after each other with a few seconds delay - were also the HP2 Enduro riders Simo Kirssi, Jimmy Lewis und Chris Pfeiffer.


After an impressive demonstration of their skills on the track they commented their runs with cool understatement: "It felt rather unspectacular," Pfeiffer explained. "But sometimes, unspectacular is quite fast." "No special occurrences," let Kirssi know. Nice to receive such relaxed reports right after flat-out runs up the hill, spiced up with some nasty gravel chicanes.


Later on the official results brought the sensation. At first, nobody was willing to believe it - so the announcer waited for another confirmation. Then it became official: Simo Kirssi (9:05,65 min) defeats Kurt Nicoll on his 1-cylinder KTM by breathtaking 6 seconds. With Chris Pfeiffer on 3rd and Jimmy Lewis on 5th (9:29,38 min) the BMW Motorrad Enduro Team Feil was highly pleased that evening.


"Best time counts" say the regulations for the Iron Road Prologue. Which simply means that the personal best - no matter if reached on Friday or Saturday - determines the final result. So for the next day everything is still possible - therefore, on Friday night, preparations are taken seriously.